Week 5:
Bar-prep Blues

Howdy, preppers! This week's topics: Nothing is sticking! (a.k.a. the bar-prep blues) and the upcoming Barbri Simulated MBE.

Nothing is sticking! And my scores in Adaptibar are dropping!

You've been studying hard for at least a few weeks now. You should be seeing obvious signs of dramatic improvement, right?

Wrong! If you're like most preppers, you feel like your overworked brain is retaining nothing. What you studied in the first week of prep seems to be gone. Your score in Adaptibar is sinking and taking your confidence down with it. You have a bad case of the bar exam blues.

Don't fret. This is normal. You're not alone. And it will be ok.

Here's what's happening in your brain (in layman's terms, which is the only way I can understand it): Your brain has two memory banks: Short-term or working memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory can hold a limited amount of information. Long-term memory is (theoretically) infinite. The first half of bar prep quickly overwhelms your short-term memory. Your prep co. has you drinking something new from the doctrinal fire hose every day; there's no way to retain it all in your short-term memory. Cramming doesn't work on the bar exam.

So your brain starts moving info from short-term to long-term memory. This mostly happens while you sleep (which is one reason that a solid 8 hours of sack time every night is essential during bar prep). That's good, because your long-term memory has space for all the hearsay exceptions and the business-judgment rule and everything else you need to know.

But moving info to long-term storage creates another problem: Efficient retrieval. To answer a bar-exam question, your long-term memory has to send the appropriate rule to your short-term memory, where your brain can use it to answer the question.

So how do we make retrieval more efficient? By answering practice problems. Every time you attempt to answer a question and ask your long-term memory to serve up the relevant rule to your short-term memory, you reinforce the neural pathway that allows your brain to find and access that information. The more you recall (or attempt to recall) a particular rule, the stronger the pathway for that rule becomes. Practice questions are the best way to reinforce the pathways you need for exam day. Flashcards can help, too.

Contextualizing is vital, too; a well-ordered "cognitive schema" in your long-term memory will spit out the right rule much more efficiently than a disorganized mishmash of rules from different topics. How to contextualize? When you get an MCQ or essay wrong, don't just memorize the rule you didn't know (or couldn't remember). Crack open the shortest of your prep co's outlines and find where that rule appears in the outline in relation to everything else you need to know for that topic. Context matters.

So what about Adaptibar—why is my score dropping? It's a combination of two things: First, your brain is still working on the long-term/short-term connections described above. Second, Adaptibar identifies your weaknesses and forces you to work on those weaknesses by sending you more questions that its algorithm thinks you can't answer. That's why Adaptibar is worth what it costs. Answering MBE questions and getting them right gives you the warm fuzzies, but getting them wrong gives you something much more valuable: The opportunity to learn something you didn't know. It's a beatdown, for sure. It can be demoralizing. But working on your weaknesses is exactly what you need to do. So embrace the suck and have a growth mindset: Struggle is not a sign of failure; it's a sign of learning.

TL;DR: This too shall pass. But it's going to take a while. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Don't get discouraged. Don't let a bad session of practice questions ruin your day and stop you from moving forward. You can do this.

Barbri MCQ "midterm"

As I mentioned last week, Barbri has a multiple-choice "midterm" called the "Simulated MBE" or SimMBE about halfway through the prep season. (Themis has one, too, but it falls a couple of weeks later.) This year, the SimMBE will appear on most preppers' schedules the week of June 20 or 27. If you're ahead in bar prep, the midterm might show up on your schedule sooner (and a few of you have already taken it).

The SimMBE is a full day of multiple-choice questions—100 in the morning and 100 in the afternoon, just like on exam day. It's an important waypoint in bar prep because it will uncover your relative strengths and weaknesses. It also gives you a taste of what it feels like to answer bar-exam questions for two three-hour sessions.

Before you take the SimMBE (two or three days before), you should complete Study Aid 1 in Adaptibar (aka SA1). That will help acclimate you to answering 100 questions in three hours and reduce the chance that exam fatigue will affect your score. If you don't have Adaptibar, you can take "PE1" in Barbri's "MCQ Bank" (click "MCQ Bank" on your BB dashboard, then Exams>Pre-Created Exam>PE1).

When you take the SimMBE, simulate exam conditions as closely as possible. I.e., take it in a place removed from distractions. Turn your phone off. Use the hardcopy test booklet and answer the questions on the bubble sheet.

After the exam (either that evening or the next morning), you should input your answers into the Barbri platform. (So why not just answer the questions on the laptop in the first place? Because you want to simulate exam conditions as closely as possible.) Be sure to watch the SimMBE review lectures.

Next week, I'll explain what your SimMBE score means, how to read it, and what to do about it. Meanwhile, hear this: If your score is lower than you hoped (and it probably will be), don't freak out! This isn't the real exam, and you still have lots of time to overcome the weaknesses exposed by the SimMBE. That's really what the "midterm" is for.

Classroom reservations for the Barbri & Themis midterms

To better simulate exam-day conditions for the SimMBE and Themis midterm, I've reserved the following classrooms on campus:

June 23: SimMBE: 201 & 204; 107 for students receiving accommodations on exam day.

June 28: SimMBE: 201 & 204; 107 for students receiving accommodations on exam day.

July 6 & 7: Themis practice exam: 201; 107 for students receiving accommodations on exam day.

The rooms will open at 8am, and the practice exams will begin at 9am sharp. The afternoon sessions will begin at 1:30pm. We will run timers in all of the rooms. Don't forget your hardcopy exam booklet and bubblesheet! Themis peeps: bring your laptop and charger for the day 1 written exam.

Covid Update

The Texas BLE recently updated its FAQ with additional Covid-related information:

What if I am exposed to COVID or contract COVID before or at the time of the July 2022 Texas Bar Exam (UBE)?

If the CDC guidelines in place at the time of the July 2022 Texas Bar Exam (UBE) recommend that you isolate or quarantine, then you must not come to the exam. You can ask for a fee waiver when you re-apply for the next exam, and you may be asked to provide documentation to support your fee waiver request.

If you are taking the exam in a jurisdiction other than Texas, please check your state's BLE website for exam info.

As I'm sure you know, another, even more contagious Covid variant is spreading. Several preppers have contracted Covid in the past few weeks. If you get sick, please self-isolate! Keep studying if you can. But if you feel too ill to study, take a couple of days off to rest and recuperate; your study time will not be effective if you are feverish. You'll likely have to play catch-up when you are feeling better, but you should put your health first.

If you're not sick, stay well! Be mindful about in-person social interactions. Do what you can to avoid Covid while prepping--especially in the two weeks before the exam. How fun would it be to do all this work, only to contract Covid just in time for exam day--and have to do it all over again for the February exam?

Have you booked a hotel room?

Unless you live close to your testing site, reserving a hotel room near the exam site for Monday and Tuesday night of exam week is a good idea. Traffic, wrecks, and car breakdowns will only add to your stress on exam day. Testing-site assignments rolled out to many (all?) Texas preppers last week. If you know where you are taking the exam, now is the time to reserve a hotel room. Make sure you can cancel the reservation without penalty in case plans change (e.g., you can't sit for the exam because you have Covid).

Question of the Week: How to submit extra essays for grading?

Q: How do we submit extra essays for grading on Barbri? What about Themis?

A: See below!

Barbri

Our Barbri rep says:

Students can request for any essay in the BARBRI essay book to be graded by submitting a request to essays@barbri.com. They do not need to complete any assigned essays before this request. While they can submit as many as they want to be graded, we always suggest waiting for feedback before submitting the next one.

Themis

Our Themis rep says:

To take advantage of the Unlimited Graded Essay program, we ask that students have completed all substantive videos for the requested subject and are up to date on the assigned graded essays.

To submit a graded essay, TX students can fill out this form. The last question will ask them to upload their Word file. We will return the grader feedback to them via email. Please note that our unlimited graded essays may be done by a different person than their regular Grader.

We ask that students only submit one unlimited graded essay request at a time. Once they receive feedback via email, they can turn in another request. Submitting one essay at a time allows them to apply the grader's feedback to their subsequent essays.